


The Sun Still Rises Even Through The Rain

by adventurepants



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:42:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1610480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/pseuds/adventurepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Love is not something she expects until the baby is born, a girl who comes into the world screaming, and Regina thinks <i>yes, darling, I know what it's like.</i>"  AU in which Regina has a daughter while married to King Leopold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun Still Rises Even Through The Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This story is for Kat, my AU partner, who has spent many months telling Clara Stories with me and making beautiful art to inspire me.

_The Enchanted Forest._

 

Regina doesn't want a baby, doesn't want anything to come from the times she must lie under the king and let him have his way. She doesn't think she could love a son or daughter who is half his, she doesn't want an innocent thing to take from as her mother had taken from her. But she finds herself with child all the same, not three months after her wedding, and she believes it will be just one more hardship to endure. She can't bring herself to hate the baby, not while it grows inside her, but love is another matter entirely. Love is not something she expects until the baby is born, a girl who comes into the world screaming, and Regina thinks _yes, darling, I know what it's like._

Snow wants to call the baby Rose, Leopold had wanted a son, and Regina names her Clara, cradles her against her chest and tells her, “I love you, I love you, I love you. I will never let anyone hurt you.”

Her daughter becomes her world. She has the nurses dismissed and cares for Clara on her own, and hates every moment that she must allow her perfect baby to be held in Snow's destructive hands. She learns if she lets it happen without a fuss, Snow will coo over her sister for no more than five minutes before she loses interest or Clara starts crying, and then Regina's child is her own again. Then she can wipe the baby's tears away and rock her and tell her, “It's all right, it's all right, I've got you now.”

At night she lays Clara down in her crib and hopes, wishes, prays to whoever might be listening, that her mother will never, ever meet her granddaughter.

*

Leopold has little interest in Regina, and by extension he can hardly manage to remember that Clara exists. Regina and her daughter spend much of their time alone, and Regina likes it that way.

She goes into Clara's bedroom most nights, climbs into her bed and holds her close. She tells her stories, tells her how much she loves her, grows magical flowers that will never wilt. It's the one use of magic that doesn't make her feel dangerous—it's love. It's nothing like any magic her mother had ever used.

One night, Clara blinks at her, half asleep, and asks, “Why doesn't Father like me?”

Regina has hated her husband for as long as she's known him, but never so much as in this moment. “Clara,” she says. “My darling.” She wants to tell her that of course her father likes her, of course he loves her, because she can't bear the thought of her perfect baby girl thinking there's anything about her not to like. But she kisses the top of Clara's head and combs through her hair and tries her best to explain the truth.

“Your father and I didn't marry because we loved each other. He wanted to make me his wife because he wanted a new mother for Snow, and I wasn't given a choice in the matter. Your father... he's used to getting what he wants, and he thinks that he can have these things because he's the king and no one dares to challenge him. I was a gift for Snow, to him. I don't believe he ever really wanted to have a child with anyone other than Snow's mother, but that is not your fault, Clara. There is nothing wrong with you, there's nothing disappointing or unlovable about you. I love you so much. You're more than I ever could have hoped for. You must always remember that, Clara. Remember how much I love you.”

Clara nods. “I love you too, Mama.”

*

Clara learns magic early. She is seven when she imitates the flick of her mother's wrist and produces flame, and Regina's breath catches and her stomach turns and she tells her, “No, no, darling, you mustn't do that, it's dangerous. I know you've seen me use magic, but it's not safe. It's not good,” she says.

Dark magic in her body feels heavy, thick. It crawls inside of her and replaces what's there with something else, something cold. She panics at the thought of that magic inside of her daughter, until Clara puts one hand on her arm and casts light from her fingertips with the other.

“It's all right. See? It's good,” Clara says, and giggles as she waves her fingers around and watches the light dance against the wall.

Regina closes her eyes and breathes out and yes, it's good. She feels it rushing into her from her little girl's hand on her arm, and it's warm. Made of light. She doesn't know how, but she's made something pure, something darkness can't touch.

*

Clara is still young when her father dies, young enough that Regina doesn't dare pin on her the burden of knowing her mother's involvement. Regina helps her get dressed on the day of the funeral, and Clara knows that because she's a princess, people will be watching her today.

“I'm not sad, Mama,” she whispers, though there's no one else there to hear her.

“That's all right, darling,” Regina says as she brushes her daughter's long hair. “You don't have to be. Whatever you feel is all right.”

“But I'm supposed to be sad. And people will look at me.”

Regina sets the hairbrush aside and turns Clara around to face her. “Just stay close to me. Stay close to me and keep your head down, and if anyone looks at you they'll see nothing out of the ordinary.” She cups Clara's face in her hand and dares to hope that everything will be better, now that the king is dead.

*

The worst moment—at least, the moment that fills her with the most shame—comes when her daughter sees her tied up before a firing squad. Regina is wild until she hears Clara scream “Mama!” and then the world abruptly stops. Clara is not supposed to be here.

“Clara, sweetheart,” she pleads with her. “You need to go inside. Please go back inside.”

Clara shakes her head and sobs and runs to her sister. “Please stop,” she begs. “Please don't take my mother from me.”

“She took our father,” Snow says, a hardness in her voice that Regina hasn't often heard.

“I don't care!” Clara wails, falling to her knees by Snow's side, and even from a distance Regina can see how Snow is shocked to hear these words.

“Clara, don't say that!”

“He didn't care about me, he didn't love me. My mother loves me, and if you kill her I'll never forgive you. I need her. Snow, please don't take my mother!”

Snow is quiet for a long moment while Clara continues to cry, repeating, “I'll never forgive you, I'll never forgive you” through her sobs.

“Take her back to her cell,” Snow says finally.

“Snow!” David says, shocked, and Snow shakes her head.

“It's her mother. I can't kill my sister's mother.” Snow kneels down and reaches a gentle hand out to Clara. Clara resists.

*

Regina is sure Snow has forbidden Clara to visit her mother in her cell, but she comes anyway. There is defeat in Clara's eyes that frightens Regina to see—Clara is fifteen, she is too young to look this way.

“I will get us out,” Regina promises her daughter, hands gripping the bars of her cell. “I'll take us somewhere far away from here, where we'll be together, and free.”

The curse is more dangerous, more powerful than any magic Regina has ever done, but they cannot live this way. She's gone over it a hundred times and she is lucky, she knows, that it gives her a choice. If it had asked for the heart of the person she loves most, it would be useless. She would never harm Clara to free herself. But it requires the heart of someone who loves her most, and she will sacrifice her father to free Clara from this life.

“How?” Clara asks. “How can we get away without being caught?”

“Don't worry, my darling,” Regina tells her. “Just know that I have a plan.”

***

 

_Storybrooke, Maine._

 

When the curse breaks and the world opens up and everyone stumbles and pauses and _knows_ \- Clara's first thought is of her mother.

Her mother is the mayor, and the mayor has a son, and Clara doesn't think she's ever spoken to her.

Her mother abandoned her- because she must have done this, it had to be her.

And Clara is _angry._ She can't remember ever being so angry before, not even... not even at the boy from school whose name she can't remember, because when she tries her head starts pounding because it's too full with remembering _before._

She sees the palace, and her bedroom, and her mother's tree, and her mother's prison cell, and all she wants is to see her  _mother-_ even if she's angry. She knows, if she can just see her, this all might make sense.

She's halfway to the mayor's house when she remembers Mom and Dad, and oh God, who are they really? There are memories of a childhood in Storybrooke that are slipping away faster than she can grab hold of them- a swing set, a birthday, a first day of school, and she knows they never happened. The only picture she can hold onto is a crisp fall morning, where she is herself, Clara, fifteen, on a sidewalk in town with her parents, but the clothes are unfamiliar and she doesn't have a cell phone in her hand and oh, oh, how long have they been here? In her mind she crunches leaves beneath her boots and looks up as she hears her dad say, “Good morning, Madam Mayor.” Clara looks at Regina Mills and doesn't recognize her.

Clara, fifteen, who remembers, stops in the street and bends over and feels sick. There are people everywhere, in a frenzy to find their lost loved ones, and a stranger stops and asks her if she's all right. She straightens up and shakes her head and that's when people begin to scatter, that's when she sees the purple cloud rolling in. She knows magic when she sees it. She isn't afraid. It was never magic that scared her.

It passes over her and leaves her unharmed, and she runs the rest of the way to the mayor's house. Her mother's house. She bangs on the door and no one comes and she thinks she was stupid to come here, her mother must be in hiding, and she doesn't know what to do or how to get to her. She slams her fist against the door one more time, shouting, “Mama, please!” and that's when she hears footsteps, and a latch turning, and then she's there. Clara doesn't know how long it's been since she's looked at Regina Mills and known she was her mother, but there's an ache filling her up that tells her it's been a very long time. “Mama,” she says, and wants to run into her arms, though she doesn't. “Did you do this?"

Her mother's eyes are red, and Clara remembers the son, remembers hearing that he was in the hospital. She remembers seeing the boy with the sheriff and how people had gossiped that the mayor was losing her son to his birth mother. For an awful, hateful moment she thinks that now they've both been replaced. “Clara,” her mother says, and her eyes well up with new tears. She reaches out and Clara stiffens and steps back.

“Did you do this?” she asks again, and she _knows_ —she has never known anyone as she knows her mother—but still it's not until Regina closes her eyes and nods that Clara wraps her own arms around herself and starts to cry.

“If you brought us here then why weren't we together? Why would you separate us, why would you make me forget you?” She takes another step back and sees the way that it makes her mother panic, but she doesn't understand. She doesn't understand, when she remembers every promise made to her that they would be all right. That Snow couldn't keep them apart, that no one could.

“No,” her mother says. “No, Clara, I thought I would have more control over what happened. I thought we would be together here, you have to know that. I wanted us to be together. I wanted us out of that life, together. When I woke up in Storybrooke and you weren't in the house with me, I couldn't... I couldn't breathe. I thought I would die.”

Clara knows that it's not a lie, but she's dizzy as she tries to grasp the scope of this magic, the enormity of what her mother has done. She shakes her head and can't quite find the words, any words, to say how she feels.

“Please,” Regina says, and takes a careful step forward. “Let me hold you, sweetheart. It's been so long.”

And even if Clara is angry, even if she can't understand, she walks straight into her mother's arms, then, and lets out a sob when it feels exactly right, exactly the same. “My darling,” her mother whispers against her hair. “I've missed you so much.”

Clara hears a rumble behind her then, that grows in volume with each second, and it takes her too long to recognize the sounds as human: a mob. “Get inside,” her mother says in a tone that does not invite defiance, but Clara turns around and too many things happen in impossibly quick succession that leave her unable to retreat even if she'd wanted to.

“Clara!” her sister gasps, pushing through the crowd, which grows quieter for Snow White. The sheriff is right behind her, and her sister's prince, and then there he is- the boy. Her mother's son.

“Mom? Who is she?” he asks.

And then the front of the group is being jostled again and her parents (not her parents) appear and her mom (not her mom) says, “Clara? What are you doing here?”

Clara looks over her shoulder at her mother, who hasn't spoken, who has gone hard and cold except in her eyes, which are still deeply, deeply sad. “She's my mother,” Clara says, which makes not-her-mom and not-her-dad grow very still, while the boy— _Henry,_ his name is Henry Mills, looks up at Sheriff Swan, and then at Clara.

“What? No!” he says. “That's not in the book!”

If anyone answers him, she doesn't hear it, because that's when Dr. Whale, who's treated her once or twice (or God, a hundred times over the years she's struggling to remember) strides menacingly towards them and and tells Clara, “You should move out of the way.”

“No, get away from her!” She throws an arm in front of her mother and raises her other hand to knock him backwards with the magic she's sure must be back, but she doesn't feel it, even the slightest hint of it until her mother reaches for her hand and says, “Clara, don't,” and then her magic crackles and sputters and the doctor is thrown to the ground.

The mob is loud and unruly but afraid to advance while Clara's hand is still raised defensively. Snow rushes onto the porch and waves her hands and declares to her subjects, “It's all right! It's all right, my sister won't hurt you.”

“She practices her mother's dark magic!” someone shouts. “We always knew the queen would raise a devil child!”

Not-her-dad turns around and says into the crowd, “Don't you dare say that about my daughter!”

“She is _my daughter!_ ” Regina says, suddenly vicious, and Sheriff Swan steps up onto the porch and shouts, “Everybody calm down!”

Clara notices Henry staring at her then, and she stays right by her mother's side, never letting go of her hand.

“Regina will be locked up,” Snow says. “For our protection and her own. But no one harms Clara.”

*

Her mother in a cell is too much like before, and Clara is scared and still angry and so, so tired, and all she can do is sit on the floor and hold her mother's hand through the bars and listen.

“I never stopped loving you. If you trust just one thing I tell you, I want it to be that I loved you every day. I never stopped missing you. I wanted to take it back but I couldn't.”

Clara closes her eyes and leans her head against the bars. “Then why didn't you let Emma break the curse right away? Why did you fight it? Why didn't you want me back?”

Regina squeezes Clara's hand, and her voice when she speaks is so sad that Clara can't open her eyes yet, can't let herself see it. “Oh, sweetheart, I did. My Clara, I did, so very much. But you see where I am now. You saw the mob, outside my house. I always knew that... should the curse break, it would be my last days, and I didn't want to die with you knowing what I'd done. With you hating me for it.”

“Mom, I don't hate you,” Clara says, and tells herself not to cry again, to be brave. “I can be mad at you and not hate you. And I won't let you die.” Regina reaches out to brush Clara's hair away from her eyes and Clara leans into the touch. She's spent too long missing this. She won't give it up again.

“I don't want you to feel like you have to stay here and look after me. I'll be all right for a little while. I'm sure your—” Regina stops abruptly and Clara realizes her mother can't say _parents_ about the people who aren't her, and Clara thinks it paints a clear enough picture of what it's been like with Henry and Emma ever since the savior rode into town in that yellow car that she's sure her mother thinks is atrocious. Regina tries to hold onto things too tightly, but it's only because she's lost so much. Clara thinks Henry doesn't quite understand that part, yet.

“They're not really my parents,” Clara says. “They were, but... it doesn't...” she stops and struggles to put it into words. “I have all these memories of them, and I know _some_ of them are real, but all that feels like someone else's life, now. Like I watched it. Like it wasn't really mine. They don't feel like my parents anymore. _You're_ my mother.”

Regina's smile is achingly sad. “Still, they must wonder where you are.”

“They have children. Young ones, three of them. They're trying to find them. They never did anything to you, they never met you, and you took their family away when we came here.”

“There is nothing I can say to make that better. There is nothing... I can't take it back. I understand if that means you can't forgive me or you don't want to be around me, but--”

“ _Mom,_ ” Clara interrupts her, and holds her hand tightly. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Her mother smiles again, that terrible mournful smile. “I watched over you, you know. As best I could. To make sure you were all right, and just... to see you. You were happy. I knew I could manage, if you were happy and safe.”

“I don't remember seeing you around much,” Clara says.

“I kept my distance. I came to your school play, ever year. I'd get there a little late and sit in the back, and then leave early. I just wanted to see you. It... made it just a little bit less unbearable, to see you. But for you to see me, and not know me... it was too much.”

Clara pulls that hazy memory from her mind once again, the one she'd remembered in the street. “I saw you walking down the sidewalk once. I was with... it was fall and I was dressed like I just walked out of the Breakfast Club and I didn't know you.”

Regina nods. “That was the first day.”

“That explains the clothes.” Clara's head hurts when she tries to reconcile memories from 1983 with the fact that her birth certificate says she was born in 1997. Her mother doesn't say anything for a moment, so Clara asks, “You came every year? Even after you adopted Henry?”

“Every year,” Regina says firmly. “You never, ever meant any less to me. And Henry was never meant to replace you. I love my son with my whole heart, but I love you exactly as much.”

*

When Snow and Emma fall through a magic hat into another land—their land—there's a part of Clara that simply can't believe it. A part of her that still feels like Clara from Storybrooke who's never seen magic. For a moment she tells herself  _no, that's not you anymore_ . But maybe she'll have to be both, now, or a third person entirely.

There is a little piece of her heart that clenches painfully as she watches her sister disappear, because despite everything she never wanted her  _gone_ , not like this—and then a flood of relief she feels guilty for, that it was Snow and Emma and not her mother. If Emma ever comes back, Clara won't know how to thank her.

She does feel bad for Henry, this red-faced frantic boy who almost died and then lost one of his parents all in one day. He hasn't said a word directly to her so far, but she has caught him staring at her like he just can't make sense of there being another child in his mom's life. She can't quite blame him, because she hasn't wrapped her own head around it either just yet. He's a stranger to her—her mother's son, but not her  _brother,_ not yet _—_ and if she dwells on it too long she feels impossibly out of place. In one breath she is Clara from Storybrooke who doesn't know Mayor Mills, and in the next she is Clara the princess, whose mother is her world but whose world is not  _this_ place _._ She doesn't know how to make it all fit.

Henry goes home with David. Clara watches her mother's heart break right before her eyes, and it's the first time she thinks she might hate Henry. She doesn't want to leave her mom for even a second, not when she looks like this, but she has a toothbrush and pajamas in the house she's lived in for almost 29 years and there's no reason not to get them.

She kisses her mother's cheek and promises she'll be back soon. “I love you, Clara,” Regina says, a little bit panicked, like she's afraid Clara might have forgotten.

“I love you too,” Clara says, another promise.

Her house is empty, and it's better this way, no one to ask her if she thinks this is really such a good idea. No one to tell her no, though she'd almost like to see them try. (It's Snow, when she imagines it, her head tilted and asking, “Do you really think that's wise? Why don't you come home with me instead?”) She throws as many of her things as she can into a giant duffle bag, and then stares at her phone in her hands for a moment before deciding to leave a note instead:  _I'm at my mother's house, but please don't worry. She's not the evil queen you think she is, and she would never hurt me. I hope you find your children, and that you can all be together and safe. Thank you for everything. We'll talk soon. Love, Clara._

She stands in her bedroom for one last long moment and looks around, making sure she hasn't left anything she can't live without for at least a few days. There's a stuffed rabbit on a shelf and she freezes when she sees him because she knows, suddenly and finally, that he's not from here. She remembers carrying him by his ears around the palace and wrapping her small arms around him at night, and when she picks him up now she knows it's the same one. The first gift her mother ever gave her.

She puts him in her bag and zips it shut and tells herself  _not real, not real,_ to every false memory of a childhood in Storybrooke that's still fighting for space with memories from home.

Back at her mother's front door, she stops short. It's her mother's house and so it should be hers, too, but still she doesn't know if she should ring the doorbell or just go in. She hears the latch turning just as she remembers that she doesn't have a key, and then her mother is saying her name, her voice soft and relieved, eyes going straight to the oversized bag slung over Clara's shoulder that's clearly not just packed for an overnight stay.

“Oh,” Clara says. “I figured I didn't have to ask. You want me to stay, right?”

She's being crushed in her mother's arms before she knows what's happening. “Yes, Clara. I want you to stay.”

They go upstairs and Clara feels so helplessly awkward needing things pointed out to her in her own mother's home. The bathroom, her mother's bedroom, the guest room that's going to be hers, now, that she can decorate however she likes. “I'll paint it any color,” Regina says. “Whatever you want.”

She doesn't point out Henry's room, but his door is open and Clara can see his hastily made bed and a pair of shoes in the floor as they walk by. Clara has never had to share her mother with anyone, and she knows it's selfish and childish but she's glad he isn't here tonight. She wants some time here alone, some time to feel like her mother is hers again. When she tries to imagine living in this house with Henry it's all blank space, she can't fathom it. Even with a sister she'd grown up feeling like an only child.

She puts on her pajamas and brushes her teeth and drops her toothbrush into the holder next to a red one that must be Henry's. They'll figure it out, she thinks, and heads back to her bedroom.

Her mother is standing by the bed, holding the stuffed rabbit which she must have seen peeking out of Clara's open bag.

“He's the same one,” Clara says, as her mother strokes the toy's fur with something like reverence. “I've had him the whole time we've been here.” Regina looks up and takes in the sight of her, t-shirt and striped pajama shorts and chipped nail polish, her long hair messier than it had ever been when she was a princess. There's so much love in her eyes that Clara doesn't understand how Henry could ever have thought their mother was evil.

But if he hadn't thought it, would they be here now, like this? Would Emma have made it to Storybrooke anyway, to break the curse? Emma brought Clara and her mother back together, when Regina believed it could never happen, when Clara didn't know they were apart. They must, at least, find some way to bring Emma back home.

Clara's mother puts the rabbit down on the bed and is quiet for a long moment. “I'm so sorry,” she says finally. “I meant to do so much better for you.”

“I know,” Clara says, and she does. That doesn't make this easier and it doesn't make it right for her mother to have cursed so many innocent people. But they are here now, together, and she won't let them put her mother back in jail. They'll have the rest of their lives to be family. “Let's get some rest. We need it.”

*

It's strange trying to fall asleep in this unfamiliar house, and all Clara can think of is her mother living here for over 28 years and how for 18 of those she was alone. Knowing every day would be the same and thinking that it would never, ever change. Suddenly she remembers the flowers outside the house, and realizes they're the same ones her mother used to grow for her with magic, inside her bedroom in the palace. Clara was never forgotten. Not after 18 years alone, not after Henry.

She gets up and goes across the hall to her mother's bedroom. “Mama?” she says, knocking softly.

“Come in,” her mother says, and Clara pokes her head in the door.

“Can I stay here tonight?”

Her mother's smile is heartbreaking. “Yes, baby. Come here.”

Clara slips in under the covers and her mom hugs her close and and she feels safe, in that old familiar way, like she's a little princess in a castle again whose life isn't perfect but whose mother will never let anyone hurt her.

*

In the morning, Clara wakes up and knows she's home. She finds her mother in the kitchen cooking breakfast—for her—and it's not something she's ever had before, her mother never cooked in the palace, but she stands still in the doorway and watches and is struck with how  _right_ it feels. They are different people here, but the same in their hearts, the same with each other.

Regina turns around and smiles, looking relieved and bereft all at once. She's been making breakfast for Henry for the last ten years, and today he'll wake up somewhere else. Clara never minded David, and she's sure Henry is fine, but she's also sure he's not getting anything more involved than pop tarts this morning.

“I made everything,” her mother says, and Clara pushes away from the doorway finally. “The pancakes are just plain ones. I didn't know... Henry always liked chocolate chip, but I don't know what kind you like.”

Clara crosses the rest of the distance between them and kisses her mother's cheek. “I like plain. Sometimes blueberry, sometimes banana.” She pauses. “You'll get him back too, Mom.”

“If Sheriff Swan is lost forever, then I don't believe I will.”

“So we'll get her back,” Clara says. “And Snow. If it's not any extra trouble,” she adds, and her mother laughs, and Clara won't let herself believe that they'll be anything but all right. After all this, they deserve to be okay.

“Oh, God, if only it had just been Snow,” Regina says, and her laughter is almost hysterical, like everything in the world is wrong except for the two of them together. Clara remembers that feeling.

“We'll bring them back,” Clara promises.

“I'm not sure there's a way,” Regina says. “I'm not sure I'm meant to keep anyone I love for good.”

Clara's eyes fill up and she hugs her mother tight. “There's a way. There has to be. I'll help.”

“Not if it's dangerous. I won't... I need you to stay safe.”

Clara picks up one of the plates that her mother set out. “We'll talk about it in a little while. We'll fix it. Now let's eat breakfast.”

 

 


End file.
